Would you open the door for a child knocking in the middle of the night?

If a knock at the door turned out to be a small child, do you automatically open it, or is it smarter to be skeptical. (AP Photo/Paul Vernon)

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Any unexpected knock at the door after dark can put you on guard, but what happens when the voice on the other side sounds like a child?

An Everett man was faced with a tough call when he heard the voice of a 5-year-old knocking outside his apartment door at 4 o’clock in the morning last Saturday.

Erik King decided to call 911 instead of immediately opening the door. In the 911 call, King can be heard saying to the child, “I’m not opening it up, you know. It is 4 o’clock in the morning.”

The child ended up being a 5-year-old girl that police say was taken out of her bedroom by a stranger.
Authorities were able to locate the girl via King’s 911 call. King later told KING 5 he didn’t open the door because he feared that the child knocking was a setup.

“I am very sympathetic for this guy for not doing it,” said Tom Tangney. “I think he actually did the right thing – OK stay right there, talk to me through the door. I’ll call 911 and make sure everything is kosher. If she’d been part of a setup, the adult would say hey let’s get the heck out of there.”

Co-host John Curley said he’d probably be the dupe that did open the door in the wrong situation where it actually was a setup.

“If you look through the window, and you see some little kid, I would probably end up opening the door and whoever it is would come in and slash my throat.”

Tom also says he feels for the guy who now feels guilty about not treating the little girl a little more tenderly considering what the actual situation was.

“I sympathize with him saying he feels terrible because he has a 4-year-old, he’s like if my 4-year-old son showed up on somebody else’s doorstep I would hope they’d be a little more gracious than me,” said Tom. “But this is the world we live in.”